comes down again. If my information is not
correct, we shall return here. I will therefore, if you will allow
me, pay you our reckoning at once, and also the rent of the rooms
for another week; so that if we return, we may find them
unoccupied."

"But you are not going to start this evening, surely, monsieur?"

"Yes; I have arranged for a passage on a boat that is on the point
of starting, and have not a moment to lose."

He ran upstairs to Patsey.

"They have gone on to the carriage," he said. "Put on Louis's
things and your own. I will tell you all about it, as we go."

He then went down again and settled up with his landlady, who was
profuse in her exclamations of regret at their departure. In a
couple of minutes Patsey came down. She had the letter that she had
written in her hand. Leigh took it from her.

"I have already settled up with our kind hostess," he said. "Say
goodbye, dear, at once, or the boat may be starting without us."

A minute later they were out of the house. Leigh carried Louis, and
led the way to a spot near, where two or three fiacres were always
standing. He took the first, and told the driver to put them down
in a street at the lower end of the town, the name of which he had
noticed when he went with Monsieur Flambard to the inn where the
carriage was standing.

When he got to the end of the street he told the driver to stop,
saying that he was not sure of the number. Paying the man his fare,
they walked slowly down the street until the fiacre had driven off;
and then, returning, took the road leading into the country.

Ten minutes' walking brought them close to the little inn. They met
the carriage coming along slowly, three hundred yards before they
arrived there. It stopped at once.

"You are here sooner than I expected, madame," Monsieur Flambard
said, as he alighted and helped Patsey.

As she took her place by the side of Madame Flambard, the latter
threw her arms round her neck.

"Thank God this awful time is over!" she said. "It is to your
brother we owe it that we are not, both, now in that terrible
prison.

"Leigh is good at breaking prison," Patsey said. "He rescued me
from the gaol at Nantes."

By this time her husband and Leigh had taken their places. Louis,
still soundly asleep, was transferred to his mother's lap; and the
carriage, turning, went back at the full speed of the horses.

Chapter 18: Home.

"Why did you come down the road?" Leigh asked Mons